If you find yourself lacking variety in the smart speaker market, then you might want to do what Redditor Zen_Kong did. He took upon himself to make his own smart speaker. And not just any plain old smart speaker, he created one shaped like the head of Bender the robot from Futurama.
He took it even further by replacing the usual assistant voices (Siri, Alexa, or Google Assitant) with Bender’s actual voice along with his brazen attitude.
To create this smart speaker, Zen_Kong went through a rather long process. Using two 3D printers, he was able to print the bulk of the head as well as the translucent, glowing parts of the structure.
He used a Raspberry Pi Zero and a combination of the speech recognition software, Pocketsphinx, and custom Python code to program the speaker. This configuration allowed for the recognition of voice commands and initiating the proper response. He recorded Bender’s phrases from the show and linked them to the code. And while the smart speaker does work, it, unfortunately, can’t be used online. That means it won’t be able to give current updates like time and news.
He’s made his custom Python code available to the public. You can find it over at Github if you want to try building your own Bender smart speaker.
So what exactly can you do with an offline smart speaker? Truthfully, not much. Bender can answer simple questions like “Who are you?” and “Where are you from?” but not really much else. It’s still a pretty cool speaker though, especially if you’re a Futurama fan.